Widening Gap Between Sales of FIFA and PES

The release dates for FIFA 19 and Pro Evolution Soccer (PES) 2019 video game titles are just days away. It is perhaps a good time to take a look at the total sales numbers for last year's editions of the two games.

By looking at the figures it becomes immediately clear that EA Sports, with their FIFA title, continue to strengthen their position in the football video game arena at the expense of Konami and PES. A total of 16.3 million FIFA 18 games have been sold up to this point, compared to 0.9 million Pro Evolution Soccer 2018 games. This is close to 18 times more sales. For the 2017 editions the ratio was around 14 times. The thing is, we don't have to look too far back into the past to find that sales numbers for the two competing video games used to be a lot more even.

Here are the sales figures for the 2018 editions, broken down by platforms:

FIFA 18

PS4: 11.49m
XOne: 3.01m
NS: 0.95m
PS3: 0.50m
X360: 0.25m
PC: 0.08m

Total: 16.28m

PES 2018

PS4: 0.70m
XOne: 0.1m
PS3: 0.08m
X360: 0.02m
PC: 0.01m

Total: 0.91m

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For EA Sports FIFA 18, 70% of purchases came from the European Continent, while 10% came from North America. For Konami PES 2018, around half of the purchases were from Europe, one quarter was from Japan and just above 10% came from North America.

It is interesting to note that the sales of both games took a significant hit when compared to the 2017 editions, when FIFA sold 17.01m copies and PES did 1.26m. For Konami this is a concerning 28% drop in sales, while for FIFA the drop was in the 4% range. With that being said, FIFA sales would have experienced a bigger drop if there wasn't for the summer World Cup in Russia, which boosted the sale of the game by 10%. EA Sports were well prepared for this event and they provided a fully licensed World Cup game update, which was the reason for the sale boost.

Another interesting summer development is that EA Sports managed to take over from Konami two important licenses, primarily the UEFA Champions / Europa league and also the Italian Serie A license. This is a further blow to Konami and a major victory for EA Sports. The sales figures for the 2019 editions of the games surely will show a widening gap between the two former rivals.

This is good and bad news for the fans of digital soccer games. The positive is that having one mainstream game will make it easier for organizing competitive tournaments and it is probably good for the growth of eSports, as all the best players will focus on one game only. The negative, arguably, could be the fact that close competition between the two games over the years has made them both better. What happens now, with one dominant and one fading game, remains to be seen.

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You can get your copy of FIFA 19 on September 28th, while the PES fans, for a change, will be able to download their game early, on August 28th.